Tag: Reviews
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If you’re at all familiar with the DC comics landscape of the last decade, the number 52 will have some meaning to you. With a little research, you’ll eventually end up discovering the eponymous 2006-2007 limited series. On paper 52 seems like madness. The plan was simple: DC would bring together five of the best creators in the business and they would publish a weekly coming for one year. It was an audacious plan and the mere fact that each and every issue shipped on time would make 52 a singular triumph. It is, consequently, very easy to forget that hiding in the history lesson is a truly fantastic story.

In media res literally means “into the middle of things” and is a narrative device wherein the reader is dropped right into the middle of the story. The structure, while far from uncommon in the comic medium, is inherently risky. By forgoing story build-up the story has to grab the reader instantly, or they will simply lose interest. With the Omega Men, Tom King (currently helming a fantastic run on Batman) with help on art from the talented Barnaby Bagenda, drops the readers not just into the middle of a foreign story but into the middle of a foreign setting, with foreign characters. The first few issues are like trying to put together a puzzle without the box and having to start from the corners.

“Hulk Smash”, “Puny human, leave Hulk alone” essentially summed up the Hulk until Peter David merged the intellect of Bruce Banner and the power of the green goliath. Planet Hulk, though takes this quintessential characteristic of powerful monster who wants to be left alone and clearly casts him as the hero.

For the longest time you thought you were alone. The sole occupant of a realm where everything has stopped. Until the day you discover another. Two people, whose ability to cease the flow of time is activated by sexual intercourse. What do you do with this power? Rob banks, obviously.Edit